Introduction

• What is Tertiary literacy – the literacy requirements of tertiary education. These are generally skills which students nowadays often do not bring with them to university or other higher educational institutions. One of these skills in academic writing. Others might include the ability to read and critical comment on complex academic texts.
• Why are we suddenly concerned with literacy, in previous generations governments were more concerned with levels of illiteracy which meant people who could not read or write. Even today the levels of literacy in a country tend to stand as a measure of the degree to which it can be called ‘developed’. But in already developed countries we are now concerned less with illiteracy and more with literacy and being able to read and write itself is now measured in terms of proficiency.
• Why the recent interest in literacy at the tertiary level. University populations in the last twenty years have changed considerably. Since the Labour Government of 1975, the fee structure has been altered considerably (first abolished and now slowly reintroduced as HECS and Full-fees) and this enabled many students access to the development of tertiary literacy who would not have had the opportunity previously. We now have students from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds who have not extensive experience with writing in their earlier careers or may have come from homes where literacy practices such as reading and writing were not widely practised.
• The composition of the Australian population has also changed with many more students coming from non- English speaking backgrounds.
• We also now attempt to market our education system as a commodity attractive to overseas students who have frequently learned English as a second language.
• Finally with the increased number of universities created in the 1980s there is competition to attract students and to fulfill requirements for the maintaining of courses. In order to do this TEE entry levels and English prerequisites have been reduced.

All these things have caused academics to comment on the literacy levels of today’s students. This comment is frequently directed to writing skills because it is those skills which are directly demonstrated to lecturers through written assignments and exams.

The concern expressed by academics has also been echoed by some of the major industries which employ university graduates and professional organisations (such as those for accountants and engineers) have frequently gone articulated their disappointment with graduate writing and communication skills to the press. This provides bad publicity for universities and sometimes prompts them to address these issues.